Tuesday, December 31, 2002

Why does law school cost so much? An important question, to those of us struggling under the weight of law school debt. George Leef fingers a culprit: The ABA, a greedy, competition-stifling cartel that has, for the past 80 years or so, gotten states to limit bar membership to graduates of ABA-accredited schools, and then has based accreditation on qualities that make law school more expensive (thus limiting the number of lawyers, and therefore competition). Sounds plausible to me.

Think about it: If it weren't for the ABA's state-enforced requirement that you graduate from an accredited school before taking the bar, you could take the bar after studying the law on your own (as did Abraham Lincoln, Leef points out).